Jpeg Compression on Smugmug (more discussion!)

ktb53

I'm a new member to smugmug.com. I think the site is great but I have one issue, JPEG compression. I've read through some of the posts about compression on Smugmug so I feel I have a pretty good understanding of smugmugs view on this, being that higher quality JPEG images results in slower downloads for users and more diskspace and bandwidth taken up on their part.

As a website designer for about 10 years now maybe I notice this more then most people but I definately see a good amount of compression on my images (and other peoples). I think the download time is a good arguement and because of that small and maybe medium should be left alone but if the user is saying they want to see a large image they are most likely not concerned about download times.

As a photographer I spend a lot of time working with my images to make sure the user is captivated by a particular image and it brings out certain feelings. If they are distracted because they can see image compression then my hard work is somewhat nullified.

I would recommend that Smugmug up their JPEG quality on large images to somewhere in the range of about 80% or 9-10 on the 1-12 JPEG quality scale (when saving from photoshop).

Besides, we do only have a limited amount of bandwidth anyhow right? So their really just looking at some additional disk space.

-Ken

Andy

ktb53 wrote:

I'm a new member to smugmug.com. I think the site is great but I have one issue, JPEG compression. I've read through some of the posts about compression on Smugmug so I feel I have a pretty good understanding of smugmugs view on this, being that higher quality JPEG images results in slower downloads for users and more diskspace and bandwidth taken up on their part.

As a website designer for about 10 years now maybe I notice this more then most people but I definately see a good amount of compression on my images (and other peoples). I think the download time is a good arguement and because of that small and maybe medium should be left alone but if the user is saying they want to see a large image they are most likely not concerned about download times.

As a photographer I spend a lot of time working with my images to make sure the user is captivated by a particular image and it brings out certain feelings. If they are distracted because they can see image compression then my hard work is somewhat nullified.

I would recommend that Smugmug up their JPEG quality on large images to somewhere in the range of about 80% or 9-10 on the 1-12 JPEG quality scale (when saving from photoshop).

Besides, we do only have a limited amount of bandwidth anyhow right? So their really just looking at some additional disk space.

-Ken

can you do the math of what it would do to disk space, for a 50% increase in file size (disk space?) and then translate that into dollars?

figure on 100,000,000 photos,

kwalsh

andy wrote:

can you do the math of what it would do to disk space, for a 50% increase in file size (disk space?) and then translate that into dollars?

figure on 100,000,000 photos,

To be fair the disk space is moot. He's talking about increasing the size of the Large image, which is already vanishingly small compared to the original. In fact the entire sum of the storage required for the Large, Medium and Small images is tiny compared to the disk space required for the original.

So how much does it cost to make the Large larger as far as disk space? Pretty much nothing.

How much does it cost to lose customers if people perceive smugmug as slow because of the extra download time for the larger Large images? Well that's where you'd do the math, and I'll leave that up to the folks at smugmug.

It is at least a novel idea to separate the settings for Large from the other thumbnails. Near as I can tell, users *must* request Large, the site will never default to it regardless of the user's screen size (correct me if I'm wrong).

In a few more years when the web gets off its behind and starts supporting JPEG2000 this will all be moot anyway...

Oh, and for my $0.02 I don't see how perfectionists can freak out about a tiny artifact here or there when they know that 99% of users don't even have the right gamma set on their monitor and the web is more or less not color managed at all. And I'm sorry, the majority of monitor phosphors have chromaticities well away from sRGB's. sRGB is an average that limits the damage, but I still see ugly shifts everywhere I view.

mercphoto

ktb53 wrote:

As a photographer I spend a lot of time working with my images to make sure the user is captivated by a particular image and it brings out certain feelings. If they are distracted because they can see image compression then my hard work is somewhat nullified.

I seriously doubt most people would see, notice or identify image compression if it slapped them in the face. People will notice composition, emotion, clarity, color. But not compression.

Mike Lane

kwalsh wrote:

To be fair the disk space is moot. He's talking about increasing the size of the Large image, which is already vanishingly small compared to the original. In fact the entire sum of the storage required for the Large, Medium and Small images is tiny compared to the disk space required for the original.

So how much does it cost to make the Large larger as far as disk space? Pretty much nothing.

How much does it cost to lose customers if people perceive smugmug as slow because of the extra download time for the larger Large images? Well that's where you'd do the math, and I'll leave that up to the folks at smugmug.

It is at least a novel idea to separate the settings for Large from the other thumbnails. Near as I can tell, users *must* request Large, the site will never default to it regardless of the user's screen size (correct me if I'm wrong).

In a few more years when the web gets off its behind and starts supporting JPEG2000 this will all be moot anyway...

Oh, and for my $0.02 I don't see how perfectionists can freak out about a tiny artifact here or there when they know that 99% of users don't even have the right gamma set on their monitor and the web is more or less not color managed at all. And I'm sorry, the majority of monitor phosphors have chromaticities well away from sRGB's. sRGB is an average that limits the damage, but I still see ugly shifts everywhere I view.

Well lets see, assuming that there are 100,000,000 photos large enough to have a large sized photo available if you increased the file size by a tiny amount, say 1 Kilobite that'd be an instant jump of 100,000,000 K which is roughly 100,000 M and 100 Gigs. Keep in mind that disk space is typically not the most expensive part of hosting a website, bandwidth is. So the question is how many large sized photos are viewed each month? I don't have any guesses I imagine it is well over 1,000,000, but I'll just assume 1,000,000 (maybe the SmugDudes will chime in - particularly if I'm wrong on all of this). So in this case a measly 1 K increase in file size would translate to a 1,000,000 K (1,000 M, 1 G) increase in bandwidth usage per month, and 12G in a year (if there is no growth).

A 1K increase in file sizes isn't going to solve everyone's problems with the larges (and believe me I have my own issues). Add a couple of orders of magnitude to the whole thing - 100K per image, which is possible in jpeg compression - and now you're looking at an instant increase of a Terabyte (which is doubled because of the RAID setup) and a yearly bandwidth hit of 1.2 Terabytes per year (assuming there are only 1,000,000 Larges viewed). That is far from insignificant. Very far.

Your last point has some merits - particularly with how I understand the JT and the guys. The artifacts aren't as big of a deal as we make them out to be. The idea is that people leave faster if you have slow loading images (remember the bandwidth useage for all of SmugMug affects this) than if you have some get-your-nose-up-to-the-screen-to-see-them artifacts. I think either JT or Baldy mentioned that it'd be nice if they could compress images dynamically. On those images where you wouldn't notice the artifacts and jpg compression that smugmuggers do in photoshop or in camera doesn't have much affect (they used a picture of a field of grass) they would compress them a lot and those pictures with large areas of uniform color like mine above they would compress a bit less to lessen the artifacts. The problem is getting a computer to be able to tell which is which on the fly. (I was thinking maybe they could somehow use the base image to do this by determining how much they could compress a given image with a set amount of jpg compression. Assuming that jpgs compress differently and those that would compress only a little would tend to be those that would stand up to a higher compression ratio and vice versa. Of course they would have to take into account the size of the original and the overhead that you get with a jpg but that shouldn't be difficult. Of course I suppose you could have an image of half grass and half sky, but I would think that it would still mostly work...maybe. But I digress.)

That said, it seems that you were saying that artifacts were affected by color management? Or was it that you were comparing two given issues, artifacting and color management?

JamesJWeg

I support leaving it as it. FWIW I would venture that the numbers thrown out about number of photo's on SM and number of views are ridiculously low compared to reality.

James.

Mike Lane

JamesJWeg wrote:

I would venture that the numbers thrown out about number of photo's on SM and number of views are ridiculously low compared to reality.

MrBook2

JamesJWeg wrote:

I support leaving it as it. FWIW I would venture that the numbers thrown out about number of photo's on SM and number of views are ridiculously low compared to reality.

James.

Are the actual numbers available? I did a quick search of the forums and came up empty. I would really like to know the actual amount of bandwidth and storage space that smugmug uses.

--Aaron

JamesJWeg

MrBook2 wrote:

Are the actual numbers available? I did a quick search of the forums and came up empty. I would really like to know the actual amount of bandwidth and storage space that smugmug uses.

--Aaron

Prolly to SM staff, but I can tell you that persoanlly I use on my one account over half of the drive space number that was thrown out there, and I know of one user who on one account used 48X the amount of bandwidth that was thrown out, so I would say that even taking averages into account those numbers are a LONG way off the mark.

James.

winnjewett

andy wrote:

can you do the math of what it would do to disk space, for a 50% increase in file size (disk space?) and then translate that into dollars?

figure on 100,000,000 photos,

Andy, I don't think that the number of photos is relevent. As the number of photos increases, so does SM's revenue. What is important, is the relative increase. Here's the math I did:

For each photo, the following files are stored:
Original: ... 2,200 kb
Large: ........ 105 kb
Medium: ....... 40 kb
Small: .......... 19 kb
Tiny: ............. 3 kb

---

Total: ...... 2,373 kb

Now, if the large file were increased by 50%, the total space requirements for each photo would only increase by 2% to 2,426 kb. I think the real question is whether it is better to force viewers to wait longer for better quality files.

-winn

JamesJWeg

winnjewett wrote:

Andy, I don't think that the number of photos is relevent. As the number of photos increases, so does SM's revenue. What is important, is the relative increase. Here's the math I did:

For each photo, the following files are stored:
Original: ... 2,200 kb
Large: ........ 105 kb
Medium: ....... 40 kb
Small: .......... 19 kb
Tiny: ............. 3 kb

---

Total: ...... 2,373 kb

Now, if the large file were increased by 50%, the total space requirements for each photo would only increase by 2% to 2,426 kb. I think the real question is whether it is better to force viewers to wait longer for better quality files.

-winn

We also need to remember that people have already complained the SM was slower than other sites, and that was due soley to file size. I would say that it is not worth it to increase size, too many lost people due to "slow" download times.

James.

Mike Lane

winnjewett wrote:

Now, if the large file were increased by 50%, the total space requirements for each photo would only increase by 2% to 2,426 kb. I think the real question is whether it is better to force viewers to wait longer for better quality files.

2,373kb * 100,000,000 total images on SM = 237,300,000,000 kb
2,426kb * 100,000,000 total images on SM = 242,600,000,000 kb

242,600 Gb - 237,300 Gb = 5300 Gb

5.3 Tb is kind of a lot in my opinion and that's just storage using your numbers, bandwidth is the real issue here.

Just saying.

Khaos

I never gave this any thought until I looked at my pics on smug mug on a 17 inch monitor at 1024x768 res. :pukeYuck! Can you say pixelation on some backgrounds and just downright not very nice looking on others.

I guess using 1600x1200 res on my home monitor helped smooth this out and I never thought what they would look like at lower res.

Being that many still use a 1024x768 res for web browsing, this has given me something to think about.

Andy

Khaos wrote:

I never gave this any thought until I looked at my pics on smug mug on a 17 inch monitor at 1024x768 res. :pukeYuck! Can you say pixelation on some backgrounds and just downright not very nice looking on others.

I guess using 1600x1200 res on my home monitor helped smooth this out and I never thought what they would look like at lower res.

Being that many still use a 1024x768 res for web browsing, this has given me something to think about.

khaos i just browsed your site, your shots look great - even on uncalibrated 17" dell monitor here in my office. stop pixel peeping nobody's not buying because of "jaggies" perceived or real

Khaos

andy wrote:

khaos i just browsed your site, your shots look great - even on uncalibrated 17" dell monitor here in my office. stop pixel peeping nobody's not buying because of "jaggies" perceived or real

:DI can't help it. OK. I'll chill.:cool I'm a pain in my own rear when it comes to whatever I do.:pissed

Thanks for looking. I trust you.

delenca

JamesJWeg wrote:

We also need to remember that people have already complained the SM was slower than other sites, and that was due soley to file size. I would say that it is not worth it to increase size, too many lost people due to "slow" download times.
James.

Ok, but this is what I don't understand. Despite all this concern about speed, Pbase is still faster than Smugmug and ImageEvent has better quality. So Smugmug is stuck in no-man's land. Neither faster nor better quality...

Also, I believe that the issue of "slow" download is not a progressive way of looking at it. Everybody I know is moving to broadband - that's the way of the future as prices drop and it becomes more available. So, in the end, the issue is moot. There will really be no difference in speed in downloading a 60kb picture vs a 120kb picture.

But even if you don't agree or care about my first 2 arguments, in the end, isn't there a really easy solution/compromise? Why not allow people the option of choosing their compression level? ImageEvent already does that. Since most people, according to you guys, don't care or notice the jpg artifacts, most people will leave the compression at the default level. The others, who care, could still have the option to compress less. Everybody wins!

Just my 2c,
-Alex

ktb53

delenca wrote:

in the end, isn't there a really easy solution/compromise? Why not allow people the option of choosing their compression level? ImageEvent already does that. Since most people, according to you guys, don't care or notice the jpg artifacts, most people will leave the compression at the default level. The others, who care, could still have the option to compress less. Everybody wins!

I would agree with delenca here, I think the account holders should be able to set the level of compresssion they want. At least for the large version.

And all this talk about bandwidth and diskspace seems silly to me when they don't have a problem letting you upload 8 megapixel images at 2-3 megs each and they will transfer those to any user who wants to see them. So what that the large image is 160k instead of 100k.

Andy

delenca wrote:

So Smugmug is stuck in no-man's land. Neither faster nor better quality...

i'm not sure that you'll find many in agreement here....

Matthew Saville

andy wrote:

i'm not sure that you'll find many in agreement here....

Smugmug is by far (in my opinion and probably many others, as Andy hints) the BEST host on the internet, as far as customization / ease of use goes. They've perfecly mated customizability with simplicity. I will never cancel my smugmug account, simply because of the awesome storefront facility available to me while relatively MINISCULE maintenance is required of me.

Regrettably, I sell almost NONE of my beloved nature photographs, but that is only because I've been at this for a year or so. And since I believe time shall continue to pass, this "regrettable fact" just might change if I don't give up!

But for wedding / play photography, I couldn't be happier.

Andy, I for one have come to realize that it's going to be quite a toss-up here, and I'll be content with the way things are. I just had a few oddball photos like that orange lily photo that have horrible thumbs, but in the words of a previous poster,

I seriously doubt most people would see, notice or identify image compression if it slapped them in the face. People will notice composition, emotion, clarity, color. But not compression.

Amen to that.


http://mattbaldon.topcities.com/matthewsaville/Front_Page.html
As a small experiment, I am beginning to construct my "dream website", (a mere two pages so far, every other link leads to existing SM stuff) ...using single JPG's created in Photoshop, and image mapping. For anyone who has any sort of broadband internet, the image will load almost instantly, and the intro music will play without a hitch. However, do we have any 56k forumers reading this? Apparently, feedback has it that these mere 160K images load a tad slow. IN my opinion, it's okay to wait for ONE image to load, in fact it's kinda fun cause you can see it scroll itself down, but I HATE to have to wait for a complex website to load. It really does turn me off.

So, people, take it or leave it...

-Matt-

Baldy

Someone was asking about how many images + bandwidth we use. Currently there are 31,000,000 images online and we're currently installing 4 3.5 TB arrays/month. 2 of them are backups. We have two 100 mbs lines coming into the datacenters and a 45 mbs line.

We decided from the very beginning to only seek subscribers with broadband and at least 1024x768 monitors. In fact, that's who subscribed, but a rude awakening happened to us and our subscribers... They shared with their parents and ran into a wall. It involved both monitor size and the dial-up problem.

The brilliant Onethumb solution was to sense their monitor size and deliver Elegant Small and it saved us from insanity, along with our subscribers. You can't imagine how mad an AOL subscriber gets who can't see her grandchildren without lllooooooooonnnnnnnggggg waits.

The opening post had a recommendation to decrease compression to 80%. That takes the average image from ~100k to 225k, about 42 seconds to display on a 56k modem.

I really don't think we've investigated adaptive or advanced compression techniques. We're getting incredible luck with adaptive autocolor, why not compression? Brute forcing it with just less compression and getting flamed even more than we do now for slow downloads doesn't sound like the best we can do.